Refuse collections

Should refuse collection be:

  • Fortnightly

    Votes: 20 27.0%
  • Weekly

    Votes: 54 73.0%

  • Total voters
    74
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Gollom

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Not a political thread per se, but I am puzzled about the fuss over fortnightly refuse collections vs weekly collections. Surely if waste is handled sensibly in a houshold the system of recyclable one week, non-recyclable the next is adequate? After all there are 2 issues here - one of reduced cost and one of doing what we can to aid the environment?

And please - this is intended to maybe open a reasoned debate, not a war! If you feel strongly, fine but please don't attack other forum menbers!


P.S. This post is not intended to attack refuse collection operatives in any way, shape or form :bannana:
 
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certainly for us we need refuse collection weekly as we have tiny little "baby" wheelie bins, small enough to fit in our tiny little wheelie bin houses.

if we forget to put our rubbish out then it can be a struggle.

if we have proper sized wheelie bins then perhaps...

dave
 
Just look at the areas that have fortnightly and the increase in vermin ........is it a coincidence? Or just bad household planning?
 
We have household rubbish collected weekly, with green waste and paper collections alternating.

It works just fine. I would like them to demand further recyclable sorting (plastics, aluminium etc) because at the moment we collect them seperately and have to trawl them to the bottle/can/textile bank as and when; but most people don't. Most of the household waste gets incinerated rather than land-filled.

It can also be a bit much when, if your bin is over-full and you put another bin bag out next to it, they won't take it.

PJ
 
Just look at the areas that have fortnightly and the increase in vermin ........is it a coincidence? Or just bad household planning?

From what I've seen - the latter! We could manage quite well with fortnightly collections as we take responsibility for recycling a lot of our rubbish and take it to the tip ourselves. More people should imho make a bit more effort - some make none whatsoever. I do however feel that local authorities should be helping people do more recycling making less frequent general collections feasible for more people.

We're lucky in that we have the means to take plastics and cardboard to the tip. Our council collect bottles, tins, paper and garden rubbish forntightly. At times we have 7 people living in this house, no mini people though, yet still manage our rubbish.
 
As far as our household is concerned it’s not about the volume of waste it’s about the type of waste.

We compost anything that we can ( keen gardener in house) and we are quite good at separating paper, plastic etc. and recycling as appropriate.

The problem items, as far as fortnightly collections are concerned, are fish and meat waste which become really unpleasant quite quickly. Especially in the warmer weather. I’ve seen it suggested that they are wrapped in plastic bags but this would appear to be somewhat against the environmental motives ascribed to the fortnightly collections.
 
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The problem items, as far as fortnightly collections are concerned, are fish and meat waste which become really unpleasant quite quickly. Especially in the warmer weather. I’ve seen it suggested that they are wrapped in plastic bags but this would appear to be somewhat against the environmental motives ascribed to the fortnightly collections.

Don't have too much of this as it goes to the dogs ;). What doesn't gets double wrapped and yes it does seem to go against the general principle - but if you've reduced everything else by so much then overall there's still less going through as general waste I would imagine.

Maybe we should be provided with biodegradable bags for this purpose.
 
We take our cardboard, plastics, paper and bottles to the dump ..but I often wonder if I am saving a carbon footprint or adding to it by running a car 5 miles each way and queueing at the other end .....:confused:
 
certainly for us we need refuse collection weekly as we have tiny little "baby" wheelie bins, small enough to fit in our tiny little wheelie bin houses.

Try to recycle more and be aware of what you buy.

We have alternating weekly collections of normal landfill waste and garden/vegetable waste one week, then recycled waste the other.
Recycled waste is bottles/glass, cans, plastic, paper/newspaper/cardboard, aluminium foil, aerosols, polyethylene bags, juice cartons, shoes, clothes, textiles.

We have a kitchen swing bin bag, if that, per week of landfill waste so the wheely bin is never even half full. Sometimes the refuse collectors check to see if there is anything in it, it's that light.
The garden waste bin is always the fullest.

We are conscious of not buying products that create a lot of waste but some of our neighbours aren't and they all put out far more recycling than waste.
 
We have 3 bins
Black for rubbish Collected fortnightly

Blue for recycle collected fortnightly alternate week from Black bin.
We have been recycling for a good part of 9 years, so the Blue bin is very helpful because in the past we used to take all the recycle stuff to the tip ourselves.

Brown for garden waste collected every 3 weeks.
This one is collected in the afternoons by a different rubbish cart.

Living on a farm, we compost a lot so very rarely put out the Brown bin.

At first we thought it would never work, but to be honest it's fine.

We don't have a major rodent problem as we use electronic devices to keep them at bay.
 
I voted weekly, but frankly, I quite disagree with both!

When I first moved here, I was shocked by the weekly refuse collection. The thought of having to keep waste for up to a week near my house was, quite frankly, a shock!

I was used to having large steel bins outside which got collected and emptied every morning, hence the waste inside the house never accumulated for more than 24 hours.

The health hazards that rotting food (and the attached vermin that it attracts) are just too big risk to overlook!

M.
 
I voted weekly, but frankly, I quite disagree with both!

When I first moved here, I was shocked by the weekly refuse collection. The thought of having to keep waste for up to a week near my house was, quite frankly, a shock!

I was used to having large steel bins outside which got collected and emptied every morning, hence the waste inside the house never accumulated for more than 24 hours.

The health hazards that rotting food (and the attached vermin that it attracts) are just too big risk to overlook!

M.

I see where you are coming from - but was your home in a very hot part of Italy? Hot countries need handling differently I agree :) :)

Prepares to remove egg-from-face in case I am wrong about country of origin :crazy:
 
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I see where you are coming from - but was your home in a very hot part of Italy? Hot countries need handling differently I agree :) :)

Prepares to remove egg-from-face in case I am wrong about country of origin :crazy:

Something to note though is that many households throw out a significant quantity of food and that's what encourages vermin.
I'm not sure about putting food directly into bins as unless they are regularly washed they smell, whereas bagged rubbish leaves nothing in the bin.
 
I think we should attack the problem at the source.

1. only buy enough food for your imediate needs ( daily,weekly,fortnightly thats up to you). We throw away an imoral amount of food

2. Get the Supermarkets to radicaly reduce the amount of unneccessary packaging...thats what takes up most of my paper/platsic bin

3.Pehaps reduce the collections in winter months and increase in summer to keep smells down whilst being ecomomical with our tax money. Like the idea of degradeable platsic bags for food
 
We have a collection weekly - one for the brown compost bin, great for getting rid of grassclippings and garden waste, and the rubbish bin on alternate week. Also get a fortnightly collection for newspapers, tins and glass, though this latter works badly - put an open crate out, and the rubbish blows everywhere (no lids), and one bit of inappropriate paper - looks like cardboard, for example, neans no collection.

In general, the biggest problem is failed collections of the rubbish bin, strikes and christmas result in a collection every 3 or 4 weeks, which makes the bins really pong:(

Overall fortnightly collection isn't a problem, provided you have a wate disposer in the kitchen sink, so you can flush away the soggy, potentially smelly stuff.

The bins and crate do take up a lot of space, though.
 
Ours is weekly for non-recylable, and fortnightly for the others but we have *five* different types of rubbish and separating it is a significant task which is a complete pain is the ass.
 
I think we should attack the problem at the source.

2. Get the Supermarkets to radicaly reduce the amount of unneccessary packaging...thats what takes up most of my paper/platsic bin

Quite like the idea - there was a very interesting trial somewhere in Italy, whereby supermarkets were asked to put large bins outside for surplus packaging. If a customer felt that a product had "too much" packaging, they would dump it into the bin at the supermarket's expense to recycle/dispose.

People started bringing ALL their packaging to these bins, and the supermarket decided the idea was too expensive to continue... it got scrapped. I quite liked the idea though, as it gives the supermarkets incentives to reduce packaging.

Gollom: you were spot on, it was Italy - but not a warm part (quite far up north in the mountains actually). They've started forcing people to split their garbage into 5 or 7 bins too, which isn't too popular either...

M.
 
Quite like the idea - there was a very interesting trial somewhere in Italy, whereby supermarkets were asked to put large bins outside for surplus packaging. If a customer felt that a product had "too much" packaging, they would dump it into the bin at the supermarket's expense to recycle/dispose.

One day when Im having a seriously grumpy moment I am going to unwrap my supermarket purchases at the checkout and leave the surplus packaging there!:devil: :eek: :D :bannana:
 
In Germany shops are required by law to take product packaging and dispose of it in an environmentally sound fashion. Unsurprisingly the amount of product packaging has reduced.

Drinks cans and bottles all have deposits which you get back when you return them. People return them.

In this country we have a much better solution, we charge people for carrier bags while all the product packaging used is both environmentally unsound ( usually much more plastic than in dozens of carrier bags) and excessive and there are no incentives not to just throw away cans and bottles.
 

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